Four paintings by Gainsborough, Turner, Monet and Lowry left their galleries to go on display in schools yesterday as part of a UK-wide project to raise awareness and access to UK collections.
Your Paintings: Masterpieces in Schools aims to take 26 oil paintings into 27 primary and secondary schools across the UK over the next two weeks. Each school will have the opportunity to use the painting as inspiration for creative learning across as many subject areas of the curriculum as possible.
The project has been developed by the Public Catalogue Foundation (PCF) and BBC Learning, and is supported by contemporary artists Bob and Roberta Smith and John Byrne.
Andrew Ellis, director of the PCF, said: “Masterpieces in Schools takes great art into the classroom to encourage interest at an early age. We hope all the children will be left with the lasting memory of the day a Monet, Turner or Gainsborough came to their school.”
Museums curators will accompany the works of art to give talks to the schoolchildren. Online resources are also available on the Your Paintings website. A dedicated website featuring works produced by children in response to the project will be launched later this month.
Bob and Roberta Smith said: “All children deserve not only to appreciate and understand art, but also to have first-hand experience of working with materials.”
The artworks are worth an estimated £14m, and for security reasons details of individual paintings and the schools will not be released until after the visit.
The first four schools to take part in the project were: Onny School in Shropshire, which borrowed Monet’s Le chemin creux dans la falaise à Varengeville from the New Art Gallery Walsall; St Matthew’s Primary in Stretford, which borrowed Lowry’s Market Scene, Northern Town, from the L.S Lowry Collection in Salford; Trelai Primary School in Cardiff, which borrowed Turner’s Dolbadarn Castle from Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru/the National Library of Wales; and Voyager Academy, Peterborough, which borrowed Gainsborough’s Heneage Lloyd and his Sister, Lucy from the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.
Your Paintings: Masterpieces in Schools aims to take 26 oil paintings into 27 primary and secondary schools across the UK over the next two weeks. Each school will have the opportunity to use the painting as inspiration for creative learning across as many subject areas of the curriculum as possible.
The project has been developed by the Public Catalogue Foundation (PCF) and BBC Learning, and is supported by contemporary artists Bob and Roberta Smith and John Byrne.
Andrew Ellis, director of the PCF, said: “Masterpieces in Schools takes great art into the classroom to encourage interest at an early age. We hope all the children will be left with the lasting memory of the day a Monet, Turner or Gainsborough came to their school.”
Museums curators will accompany the works of art to give talks to the schoolchildren. Online resources are also available on the Your Paintings website. A dedicated website featuring works produced by children in response to the project will be launched later this month.
Bob and Roberta Smith said: “All children deserve not only to appreciate and understand art, but also to have first-hand experience of working with materials.”
The artworks are worth an estimated £14m, and for security reasons details of individual paintings and the schools will not be released until after the visit.
The first four schools to take part in the project were: Onny School in Shropshire, which borrowed Monet’s Le chemin creux dans la falaise à Varengeville from the New Art Gallery Walsall; St Matthew’s Primary in Stretford, which borrowed Lowry’s Market Scene, Northern Town, from the L.S Lowry Collection in Salford; Trelai Primary School in Cardiff, which borrowed Turner’s Dolbadarn Castle from Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru/the National Library of Wales; and Voyager Academy, Peterborough, which borrowed Gainsborough’s Heneage Lloyd and his Sister, Lucy from the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.
